They had only been out of the lab for three days. Three days of raw skin, broken lips, and oxygen leeched from the Bayham Expanse’s oven-like heat, on a world flayed by an unsetting sun.

The sisters moved across the gleaming landscape like ghosts, their shadows lost in the scarlet-tinged light. Every step forward was a rebellion. Each breath, evidence of life.

The world outside the lab was supposed to be freedom. That thought was what Nika clung to through the endless nights on the cold metal, Maya curled against her, terrified. She promised skies and rivers, warmth from nature, not manufactured peace. However, with bare feet hitting the roaring, ice-tinged river that sliced the desert open like a sore, Nika’s certainty had faded.

The sun's bite to her skin was relentless. It was needles—sharp, precise, repeated. Pain in the lab had been immediate, controlled. This persisted. It swelled on her shoulders and back in waves. The water that churned at her thighs only numbed her feet and tug at her legs with icy resolve.

Behind her, Maya’s small hand clung tight to her own.

“How much farther?” Maya asked, her voice barely audible above the river’s fury.

Nika didn’t answer at first. Heat shimmer distorted the landscape as her eyes scanned the distant bank. Stones slick with moss and time jutted from the current in uneven clusters—each step a gamble between progress and death.

“We’re almost there,” she said at last.

It was a lie, but a gentle one. The kind she'd spoken to Maya when they were children in metal rooms, when the only reality they'd ever known was corridors humming with electricity and eyes behind glass mirrors.

Nika had no more idea where Hector was than anyone else. He provided her codes, escape access, and a vague promise: “I’ll find you once you reach the river.”

But what if he got caught? What if he had lied?

That thought was threatening to destroy her hard-won resolve, built over years of patient observation. She tightened her grip on Maya’s hand as the child leaped to the next rock, narrowly avoiding a slippery patch that almost made her fall. Nika pulled her up, fueled by desperation, as she gasped in shock.

"Be more careful," she growled, her tone gruffer than she meant.

Maya's face twisted, not from the scolding, but from exhaustion. Her white, spindly skin flushed in a creepy manner, blistered in patches. She was not like Nika. The doctors didn’t administer the same drugs or the same gene treatment to her. The sun hit her earlier, burned her longer.

Nika slipped down to another rock, water splashing over her calves. The sound of the river filled her mind, obliterating even her own thoughts. The cold seeped into her bones, but she welcomed the pain—it was honest, clean.

She turned to help Maya across the next chasm, then cut short.

There, on the other side.

A person.

Strengthless. Staring.

Nika's own breath caught in her throat. She dragged Maya behind her, standing in the way herself.

The figure stood half-shrouded in the dirty, golden mist that rolled off the river at sundown. They wore a long coat, streaked with dust and heavy against their backs. Their face was hidden behind the brim of a large hat. The sun illuminated them in silhouette, so it was impossible to tell whether they were friend or foe.

Was it Hector?

Nika's heart thudded. She couldn't scream victory yet. Too many would want them back. The lab hadn't let anyone out before—not without a recovery team.

The figure raised one hand in a slow, deliberate wave.

Not a weapon. Not a threat.

A signal.

Nika's heart twisted. Was it hope?

She glanced at Maya. "Just a little more, okay?"

Maya nodded, lips cracked and eyes bulging. She was trembling, even as the sun pounded down on them with no mercy.

Together, they crossed the final three stones. The final one slanted perilously as Nika stepped onto it, water pouring over her boots. She didn't care. She half-dragged Maya up onto the bank, pushing her behind her as they stood before the figure.

Now that he was closer, she could see him clearly. Taller than she remembered, a year or so older, the furrows in his face deeper. Threadbare coat.

A fresh scar down the side of his jaw.

But his eyes—those were the same. Gray. Steady. Exhausted.

"Hector?" she said, her voice strained with incredulity.

He nodded once. "You arrived."

Nika's knees nearly buckled.

All those nights of plotting, the encrypted messages between soldiers, the faith she'd placed on a bet—hadn't been for nothing.

She didn't cry. She didn't run into his arms. She didn't collapse.

She just stood there, looking at him as though he were a desert mirage that would disappear if she kept her eyes open long enough.

"What next?" she asked.

Hector glanced at Maya. His expression softened.

"Now we get out. Fast. They will come to look."

Of course they would. She could already hear it—distant, mechanical wings slicing through the air. The lab hums.

Nika whirled, shielding Maya again. "Can she make it?"

Hector looked them both over and unbuckled a satchel from his shoulder. Vials. Glowing cool blue liquid that reflected dully.

"It'll do something for the burns. And her lungs."

Maya hacked up a single cough. Nika hadn't even realized she was having trouble breathing.

"Is it safe?" Nika asked, staring at the vials.

"No. But safer than the lab."

That was all she needed.

They crouched behind the high blades of grass that lined the riverbank, and Hector injected the serum into Maya's arm. She winced, then settled, breathing more easily as the color came back into her cheeks.

Nika took her hand again. "You okay?"

Maya nodded. "It doesn't hurt anymore."

But she could read there—it still did. Just in another way. 

They drove inland, twisting through the rocky outcroppings and dusty scrub of the Bayham wilderness. The sun still clung, casting long shadowy fingers to stretch towards them.

Hector guided them with the ease of one who had trod this ground a hundred times. He spoke little, only pointing when to duck, when to run, when to stop.

Since night never came, tiredness was the only gauge of time.

Hours passed. Maybe days.

Eventually, they reached a place where the earth dropped away into a great gorge. A rope bridge straddled it, worn but intact.

Across: a cave in the cliff wall. A tunnel.

Shelter.

Escape?

Nika set foot on the first plank. It creaked under her weight. She glanced back at Maya, then Hector.

The roar of the river was well behind them now, but still echoed in her heart.

She knew what awaited her wouldn't be good.

But as the wind began to blow about them, and the heat of the sun began to falter—not much—Nika allowed herself the merest whisper of relief.

They had reached the river.

And someone had been waiting for them.